Hi Susanna,
Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!
We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.
We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.
Important note!
Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.
If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.
Okay, let’s get started!
The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.
We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.
Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.
The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.
Regarding passion you picked .
Regarding perseverance you picked .
As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.
Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.
In week 2, we looked at your interests.
Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.
Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.
Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.
In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.
You said your top three values were self-direction, achievement, and benevolence.
You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.
When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was openness.
You said your top three talents were musical, artistic / spatial, and analytic.
We then talked about goal hierarchies.
You said you had a general intuition (but nothing specific yet) about your top-level goal.
We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.
A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to .
Here is how self-concordant that goal was:
Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.
It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!
Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.
We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:
Work Smart
In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.
You WOOPed!
For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said .
For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said .
For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said .
For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: .
Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.
And here’s how much you learned
These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.
The important thing is that you learn something along the way!
In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.
You shared you’ve done daily practice in violin .
We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.
In week 8, we discussed feedback.
Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!
You said you felt upset when receiving critical feedback, and upset when receiving positive feedback.
We then turned to learning about stress.
In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being .
We also talked about adversity and failure.
Although related, adversity and failure are different:
Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.
However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…
Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.
And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.
We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.
Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.
You describe the habit you chose as .
Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.
Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?
So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.
In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.
Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.
Here’s how you described them:
You also wrote a gratitude letter to .
In one word, you said it made you feel .
One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.
… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.
Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.
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Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?
Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.
| |
| interest is an emotion |
| effort counts twice! |
| how goal fusing can make everyday tasks less tedious |
| deliberate practice consists of setting a specific goal, focused work towards that goal, and consistent feedback |
| benefits and drawbacks of stress |
| don't rely on willpower, set up your situation for success! |
In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.
Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:
| |
| Caroline Li |
| Susanna, you are an incredibly warm and empathetic individual who makes everyone feel comfortable chatting. Thanks for being a good listener during pair discussions, and sharing openly about your passion for art, how much you love the career you're going into, and all the fun things you've done this semester! Thanks also for caring about how everyone's days and weeks went, and being encouraging and down to do anything when we plan things as a group haha. Thanks for buying from our bake sale toooo! Ilyyyy
I also enjoy poker, so I learned from your discovery project presentation about how you can have a pre-flop strategy, be unpredictable when bluffing, and think steps ahead when you bluff. Thanks for chatting with Joanna also - she was so happy to share! And I also learned from your presentation that playing as a woman can be really different! Overall, poker is a very cool way to connect with people and has a lot of benefits outside of it. |
| Sarah Silver |
| Susanna, you always know how to bring a smile to each of our faces! Sometimes it was difficult to get through a 3-hour class, but our talks at the beginning of the class always made the time fly by. From smoothies, to pasta dishes for our roommates, to making packages at the JRF warehouse, we really have made so many special memories throughout the semester. You’re honestly one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met, and I know you’re going to do amazing things next year when you’re out in the real world. You brighten every room you’re in, and I loved connecting with you over the trips we’ve taken. I appreciate how we always spent those 16 minutes truly getting to know one another, and our little Grit Lab team honestly became such a sense of comfort. I’m so glad we met and became close over the semester - you really played a huge role in making this class so impactful. I’m going to miss seeing you every Tuesday, but I know the Grit Gals will definitely stay in contact!
I was especially fascinated by your Discovery Project! To be honest, I’ve never played poker in my life, and I have no clue how to play. So, hearing about your learning process was incredibly intriguing! I appreciate how you not only learned about the benefits of playing but you also took the time to acknowledge the dangers of gambling. I was also fascinated by how you used statistics and analysis to learn poker from a quantitative point of view. I appreciate your honesty about how, although deliberate practice is essential to becoming a better poker player, it is less enjoyable. You also truly demonstrated what grit was all about during that class. Even after a fall and a hurt ankle (I hope it’s doing better!), you still managed to make it to class and deliver one of the most well-thought-out presentations. You honestly did such a great job with your project and presentation, and I’m really glad I got to follow along with your Discovery Project journey throughout the semester! |
| Rafaella Lambrinos |
| Susanna is kind-spirited and empathetic. She is magnetic and genuine, and her ability to connect with others on a deep level and make everyone feel heard is a true gift. I feel like I can talk to Susanna about anything, whether it be stress from classes to things on our Christmas list. I always really enjoyed hearing her perspective on what we were discussing in class; she always had a thoughtful perspective, adding depth to our conversations and making them that much more meaningful. Susanna made Grit Lab into the positive experience that it was, and I am grateful that the class brought us together.
Susanna’s presentation was really informative and engaging. I especially liked how she walked us though different poker strategies, and explained how her methods of the game have changed throughout the course of this project. Having never played poker before, Susanna’s explanations regarding different tricks, like thinking several steps ahead and having a willingness to bet big, were helpful in illustrating the way poker works. Her point that you can’t escape chance, and must instead accept it with grace, really resonated with me. This applies to all aspects of life- not just poker. |
We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.
Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?
Drumroll please…
Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.
In any case, grit is not built in a day…
…remember that progress is never smooth…
…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.
With grit and gratitude,
Angela and the Grit Lab team.